Like Night
by Kezone
Summary: After their deaths the Akatsuki are transported to Earth, where they meet a strangely incredible native. No romance, surprisingly. Oneshot?


Um, couldn't get to sleep so I thought I'd try my hand at an old fandom cliche.

Warning: Unbeta'd.

* * *

The girl watched the stars. She would drift on the lake, _her_ lake, well into the morning on nights like these. Days when the new Naruto chapters came out. Her father, a rich businessman, had rigged their entire summer home with wifi, and then abandoned her out here. She didn't really care. The girl enjoyed solitude.

The boat was a good one, it moved fast, and while the girl knew how to control it as much as she did her own limbs, she had no idea on things like 'model' or 'maker'. Such things were 'irrelevant'. Perhaps to this girl the entire world which was 'real' was irrelevant.

She lived immersed in fictional worlds; not just Naruto, but many other manga and animes, a few well-made OVAs, and a good number of western animation series, some books, a couple movies. It didn't really matter to her what they were, as long as they could create a false reality. That isn't to say she had something she wished to escape from, more that she was bored by the perfect reality she found herself in.

Isolation.

No-one else lived for miles around here. She was enrolled in a small college in an equally small town located nearly forty-five minutes away from her family's vacation home. Her family was elsewhere, scattered across homes they owned all over the country. She was neither close nor distant to them. They existed and were on good terms, they had the bonds of family, but the girl was in her early twenties and no longer desired to live with her family.

The girl watched the stars. They were one of the reasons she loved deserted places like this. There were no stars in the city she had spent most of her school years in.

Her computer (a top model, not that she knew enough about this sort of thing to appreciate this) was perched on her lap. It was on the site for illegally scanalated Naruto manga, and every few seconds she'd impatiently press the refresh button.

She was excited for the new chapter. Well, of course she was! She had had a less than pleasant opinion of Sakura in earlier years, but with this new time-skip the pink haired kunoichi was finally starting to prove her worth. She couldn't believe that Sakura was taking on a member of Akatsuki and holding her own. The girl felt some sense of pride in Sakura. She's finally growing up and becoming a ninja in her own right!

The girl was also very interested in the Akatsuki members that were starting to show up (it was about time!). Itachi, though he and Kisame had appeared back before the time-skip, was a compelling villain, and he seemed ruthless and cruel. What sort of monster could do such horrible things to his younger brother? She was interested in seeing more form his character. She wondered if he had some sort of excuse for his actions (so far in this manga all but the Sound Five had a tragic backstory) or if he was just a heartless bastard.

Kisame had a very bloodthirsty feel about him, and she was hoping that through him she and the other readers would learn more about the Bloody Mist, and perhaps about the coup that Zabuza failed to pull off. That was such an interesting and barely touched upon section of the Narutoverse.

Deidara was an odd case. She had felt some sort of pure hatred when he had attacked Gaara like that. It reminded the girl of the moment watching Lee get hurt in the chuunin exams that she had realized that she had grown to love these characters in a way far stronger then she had ever felt before. That was the moment that she had fallen in love with the Naruto series.

However, despite being angry at Deidara for hurting a character that she, against all odds, genuinely cared for, the girl also thought that Deidara was an interesting villain. He had a very fun to watch personality, and a fighting style that would be interesting to watch pitted against the heroes. There was also some debate on his gender, but the girl was quite certain he was male, despite what some other posters on the forums thought.

Sasori. His backstory was interesting, and his fighting style (she wondered is Kankuro would ever become that masterful with puppets) was entertaining. In the latest chapter he had been stabbed through with the puppet versions of his parents. She thought it was most likely that he'd die this chapter.

Refresh.

There it was: Naruto Chapter 275.

She eagerly clicked on the link.

Sasori was still alive it seemed. Made sense. Kishimoto was sure to make his death have more impact.

When Sakura punched Sasori and stared calling him out on his actions, the girl felt a grin spreading across her face. This type of scene was what she loved most about Naruto…! Sasori was so messed up it made the girl feel bad for him. It wasn't right, that that was the way he lived… with those beliefs… If the ninja system hasn't changed for the better or preferably been completely abolished by the time the manga ends, the girl is starting to feel that she will be left unsatisfied.

What sort of cruel world advocates making children into killing machines like this? In what sort of world would people like Sasori, like Gaiden!Kakashi, like Neji had been, what sort of place would have that be the standard? It was no wonder that there were people like part one Gaara and Itachi running around.

_…what the hell are you…? _

_If I must say… maybe… a person who couldn't become a puppet. _

_…_

_I am a puppet, but… an incomplete puppet with the "core" of my real body…_

_Not Human… Not puppet…_

The girl felt regret.

She just watched as Sasori died, collapsed in the embrace of his 'parents'.

Then… Oh. So he had let himself be killed. Perhaps… that was the way it should have been. That was the way the puppet master should have ended.

The girl continued to read on. It sounded like Chiyo would sacrifice herself to save Gaara. She hoped this wouldn't go the same way Dragonball did with reviving people… In the girl's mind that would take away some of the harshness of the Naruto world. Oh! It seemed that Kakashi had developed mangeko sharingan. How though… Rin or Obito? She'd just have to wait for next week.

Would Deidara die soon as well? What would become of Gaara? Would Naruto release the power of the kyuubi? Just how strong had Naruto become over the time-skip? Also, the information that Sasori had given Sakura as he died… How would that play into everything? They'd surely go and check it out… She wondered who Sasori's spy would be. It could be a new character… The only person she could think of that worked for Orochimaru was Kabuto… Or maybe one of the Sound Five was still alive? Also, when would the remaining members of Akatsuki show their faces? And who was the Akatsuki leader?

The girl's speculating was interrupted by a splash from behind her. Had a fish jumped…? She gently set her computer down and leaned over the edge of the boat, staring into the dark water.

Then, as if it had come straight out of a nightmare, a pale hand broke the surface of the lake.

The girl just continued to stare down at it, frozen in fear.

The hand grabbed the side of the boat, and then the head broke surface as well.

A pretty face, long eyelashes and lazy eyes… Wet hair of an undefinable color framing his face… A confused expression on his face… He looked neither old nor young….

The girl shakily backtracked, but the backs of her legs soon hit the far end of the speedboat. The cold feel of metal against her legs was enough to keep her from completely losing it.

He pulled himself onto her boat with some difficulty. She was only convinced that he wasn't hiding tentacles or fins somewhere when he was completely onboard.

The girl then realized that he was completely naked.

She reached down slowly, never taking her eyes off him, and grabbed a blanket she had stashed on the boat for especially cold nights. She threw it at him, because it was clearly the decent thing to do in a situation like this.

He took a hold of it, and looked at her with a rather surprised expression on his face.

"Take it," She said. Somehow her tone sounded perfectly natural, like naked men crawled out from her lake and onto her boat all the time.

He wrapped it around himself, somewhat hesitantly. "Who sent you?" He asked.

"No-one. Why?"

"Was it Orochimaru? Or Pain? Perhaps this is Edo Tensei…"

The girl stared at him for a few seconds. "You arrive like this, in this place, and start to make Naruto references? I must have fallen asleep…"

"I don't know what the kyuubi jinchuuriki has to do with this, but…"

The girl stared at him, maybe… this was something more than… Then it clicked.

"I'm surprised. I personally thought Sasori would have grey hair."

"So you've heard of me? By that tone, I doubt someone sent you. You're a civilian, huh?"

"I am. I don't have any chakra skills at all, so I doubt I'd make a good puppet."

"You've heard those stories about me, but you aren't running away in terror?" He sounded amused.

"I'm not able to overpower you physically and I don't see any good escape routes. It is sorta surprising that you are talking in English though."

"English? That's the language of this place? I'm personally more curious about how I ended up here… I'm sure I died… Orochimaru might have interfered… I doubt it was Deidara, He wouldn't do something like this." He talked to himself, as though the girl's presence didn't matter. As he most likely was planning to kill her in a few seconds, there was no reason for him to care what she overheard. "Neither would Pain. Perhaps it was Zetsu if Tobi… No… Not even Tobi would go to these lengths for… None of the Akatsuki would…"

"Can you use chakra?" The girl asked.

"Why?" Sasori broke free of his speculating.

"Just try."

"Is this a trap?"

"Can't you tell I'm not a ninja?"

"You might not be, but that doesn't mean that you aren't a spy all the same. It isn't uncommon to hire civilians as spies."

"I'm not a ninja. I swear."

He looked at her for a second, before raising his hand to his face, and concentrating.

"…Well?" She asked. "Did anything happen?"

"Did you seal my chakra?" He asked.

"No… well, you see… In my world, chakra doesn't exist."

"There isn't a part of the world I'm aware of that negates chakra."

"I'm not from the same world of you."

"Oh?"

"In my world, your world is a manga series. You're one of the villains. You died in the latest update."

"Is that so?"

The girl could tell he wasn't buying it.

"The manga is called Naruto, and it tells the story of the kyuubi jinchuriki. It started when he graduated the academy, and continued, a new update of the story every week. At this moment it's at the place where you are killed by Sakura and Lady Chiyo. Or more, where you let yourself be killed."

"There was no-one besides Zetsu watching that fight, so unless you are in contact with him, I'm going to assume you are telling the truth. If you were lying, you'd think of something more believable then this. Though I expect you to provide proof immediately."

This was how the girl ended up showing the first Naruto chapter to a serial killer from a different world.

Sasori eventually bought her explanation, though it took a lot more than just the Naruto manga for him to accept that he was either in the most elaborate genjutsu ever or a different world.

She was glad to find that he fit into some of her brother's old clothes. She was also slightly surprised at his short height.

He, despite being a ninja, had some trouble moving, due to the human body he now possessed. The girl expected he wished he had come in his preferred form, but when he spoke he said, "At least I'm in my human body. I doubt my puppet form would function properly in your world."

He had nowhere to go in this world, so she made him dinner, showed him to the couch, and said "Maybe this'll all be done in the morning." He agreed, and fell asleep for the first time in over ten years.

In the morning nothing had changed. The girl made breakfast for two, and he asked if she could show him the series he apparently had come from. The girl nodded, and gave him the computer, asked for him not to take it apart, and showed him how to navigate the scanalation index.

He spent a week going over the series carefully, taking complicated notes, and matching events in it to events in his own life. The girl provided him with a billboard for him to organize his research on.

She didn't mention it, but she checked the computer history after he had gone to sleep one night and saw he was also learning to navigate other functions of the internet. He had been researching the Earth, its history and culture. She discreetly brought him back a stack of books from the university library that he might find interesting.

They ate meals together, when she wasn't at school. At first she did all of the cooking, but after three days she handed the kitchen over to him and said, "You're a genius, right? Think you can figure it out?"

"It doesn't look that different from what we have at home," He said. "Give me fifteen minutes."

"We'll switch off cooking every other day, alright?"

"That sounds reasonable. I am staying here indefinitely, after all."

It became something of a challenge: who could create the more delicious meal. Indeed, it took Sasori only a few tried to get the hang of the girl's overly complex kitchen, and soon the two of them were hunting down rare and extravagant recipes to outdo each other with.

She gave him the guest room the fourth night.

The fifth night she checked his internet history and found he was researching her world's versions of puppetry and immortality.

He never typed those two things into the search-box again.

(Perhaps with immortality it was the Cracked-dot-com Article that did it for him. Puppetry… maybe he was disappointed by how it was seen in her world.)

"So who is your spy…?" She asked.

He turned towards her, a small smile, "Naruto updates weekly, right?" She nodded. "I see no reason to tell you before you learn for yourself."

On the seventh day she hooked up the projector, and invited him to read the chapter with her.

"I was curious how the copy ninja's sharingan had evolved." He said. "Also… the reactions of the others to my… death… wouldn't be something I wouldn't like to see."

The two of them read the chapter. When Deidara was getting attacked by Kakashi the girl noticed that Sasori tensed. It was possible that in the ninja world this was happening to him right now.

"He was careless." Sasori says once they finish.

"He doesn't know that Naruto is the hero of the story…" She said.

"Does my world revolve around Naruto?"

"The parts of it that we see in this world do."

That week she saw him trying to practice his ninja skills in the forest surrounding the lake. Not the chakra dependent ones, but things like speed and stealth. He was incredibly fit, but it was nothing compared to the superhuman abilities of the ninja in the Narutoverse.

This week passed quickly.

The next chapter they gathered in front of the projector in the same way.

Sasori opened his mouth when he saw the title of the chapter, "Ultimate Work of Art!", but didn't make a sound.

At first the chapter was just Naruto and Deidara fighting, but Sasori watched nervously.

Then Sakura and Chiyo showed up and dismissed the fight with him like it was nothing now that it had concluded. What's more, Deidara watched this exchange from the bushes.

Deidara's thoughts on Sasori's death… Sasori wanted to go back to his own world so much at that moment and scream at the brat until he regained his respect for him.

Then… it was over so quickly…

"He didn't do it." Sasori said.

The girl turned towards him.

"He didn't kill himself. He wouldn't… not that easily…"

"Alright. It was probably a diversion then," she said.

"Yes. Even if he is a brat, he isn't a member of Akatsuki for nothing. Deidara is stronger than that."

Sasori was more anxious that week. It wasn't that he was worried about Deidara, but a part of him must have been.

The girl saw his restlessness, and led him to her father's old garage, complete with old broken cars.

"You can try to fix them up." She said.

Sasori looked over the open hoods, the dented metal, the cracked windows, the layer of rust, and nodded. The cars became something of an obsession for him. He slowly stopped trying to regain his ninja skills, or reread the Naruto manga, instead devoting his time to restoring the battered automobiles to their former glory.

The girl would have to bring lunch out to him, and the two would sit there and talk, sometimes about the cars, sometimes about the courses the girl took, but never about the world that Sasori had come from.

That week he ran out of supplies for his car, so she decided to take him into town.

He walked close behind her, and she only then became aware of how ill-fitting the clothes he wore were, and how disconnected from the outside world he had been living.

She reworked her plans then.

First she took him to a clothes store and told him to buy whatever he wanted, it wasn't like she was lacking for money. Then after he had bought and changed into a more normal attire the two of them went out to eat lunch at a small café. They had a discussion on whether it was right to kill humans. The stances they took on the subject were predictable. Sasori thought that it was perfectly natural, that letting humans live free if they were in your way was what was odd. The girl took the more sociably accepted route on that subject. 'Only if they are irredeemably evil'.

"Do I deserve to die then?" He asked lightly, quirking his head to the side.

"No, because things are different in your world. It wasn't right, but the circumstances were different… Besides, I believe this to be s second chance for you. As long as you don't kill anyone while in this world, I won't make a deal about everyone you've killed before you came here."

"A second chance?"

"Of course. What else?"

"Alright." He closed his eyes in a relaxed manner, "I accept your terms. I won't kill anyone in this world… It's not like I can make puppets out of them."

"That's the only reason…" She sighed. It was better than nothing though.

She then took him to the mechanic's. He went through the catalogs for some time, before settling on what he wanted to buy. He had a long talk with the woman behind the counter, discussing what he'd need to get the cars working again. As the girl was paying for what Sasori had requested, the woman said to her with a wink, "That man's a keeper. Really smart, even if he's completely impractical."

The girl didn't bother denying any romantic relationship. It wasn't like her word would be believed anyways. The girl had read enough shojo to know this much.

The next chapter Sasori read in complete silence.

"So she's going to die…? Do you think she will appear in this world as well?"

"I'm not sure. You're the first I've never met, and you're not the first to die."

"And even if she did," Sasori continued where the girl had left off, "She could appear anywhere. Searching for her would be futile."

The girl agreed with him.

Weeks passed.

Sasori made progress on the cars, and the girl on her classes. She continued to take him on outings to the town, slowly integrating him into her world.

In the chapters Gaara was brought to life, and Chiyo died. Sasori was sad seeing her go, but he didn't say anything.

The girl showed Sasori the Naruto fandom, and the two of them read fanfiction and the like on the projector. They also started watching the show, straining it out so they'd only watch about three episodes a day so it'd last longer. Sasori found it amusing to participate in the online forum discussions, making and reading outlandish predictions on how the series would go. He still refused to tell the girl anything about Akatsuki that hadn't been revealed yet.

Then one chapter Deidara appeared again, missing a few arms, but still alive.

Sasori saw his body that chapter too. He froze when he saw Zetsu beside him, glad he was a puppet so he wouldn't have to see himself be eaten.

There was Tobi.

"Tobi's going to replace me…" Sasori asked. "I think I was worth slightly more…"

"So what's his story?" The girl said casually.

"No idea." Sasori replied, but it could have just been him refusing to give out spoilers.

The next week revealed an interaction between Tobi, Deidara, and Zetsu.

And a new character praised of being artistic. Sasori took to that as well as could be expected.

More time passed.

The girl learned that Kabuto was Sasori's spy, and Sasori watched himself be imitated and betrayed.

Sasori spent that story arc hoping someone would finish off Orochimaru in his place. He was horribly disappointed when the snake managed to get out alive yet again.

One day Sasori arrived at the girl's college in one of the cars to pick her up. It was perhaps to surprise her that he had managed to fix it.

(Word in the town was that they were living together, possibly dating, possibly married. That was untrue.)

Eventually Sasori fixed all of the cars, and everything else malfunctioning in the house. The girl decided it was time to get him a job, "You won't be living off me forever, even if you are from a different world."

The first place she took him was the mechanics, where he had visited often over the months. He was hired, and the house was once again deserted during the days. All was well.

Nine months had passed since Sasori's arrival before there was any sign of the rest of the Akatsuki in the manga.


End file.
